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Dr Kate Shaw

Dr Kate Shaw has been awarded the Royal Society’s Research Culture Award, recognising her impact on improving equality, diversity and inclusion through education, outreach, communication, and open data. Dr Shaw’s award is to celebrate outstanding contribution to science by the Royal Society, the UK’s independent scientific academy.

Dr Shaw, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Physics in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, works on the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and the DUNE experiment at Fermilab. Kate is passionate about physics outreach, and is the coordinator of the ATLAS Open Data project to bring real LHC collision data to the public. It is for her work to share the physics and technical elements of the projects she works on with the public and university and secondary school students that she has received this prestigious award.

As well as working with the Widening Participation team here at Sussex to run physics workshops for young people, Kate is the founder of Physics Without Frontiers. This is the flagship outreach programme for universities in the Global South, of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), a UNESCO institution. Physics Without Frontiers has worked with more than 15,000 students in over 50 countries worldwide, and have hundreds of alumni. It has partnered to organise projects in Afghanistan, Namibia, Senegal, and earlier this year, Bhutan, organised by scientists at Sussex. Whilst establishing Physics without Frontiers in Palestine, Kate was a visiting lecturer for six months at Birzeit University.

Kate said: “I am very humbled to be awarded this honour by the Royal Society, and hope this helps to highlight the important work done by so many around the globe to support students and scientists in physics and mathematics, encourage international scientific cooperation across frontiers, and help our scientific community become more rich through diversity.”

Our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sasha Roseneil, said: “Kate works hand-in-hand with our dedicated Widening Participation team to spark passion for physics in children and young people, as well as working to improve data access internationally through the fabulous ‘Physics Without Frontiers’ programme. It is wonderful to see Kate receive this award, which reflects her enormous personal commitment to public outreach, as well as our open research culture here at Sussex.”

Vanessa Styles, Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences said: “Kate’s work through ATLAS making LHC data available to scientists across the world, and through Physics without Frontiers are really pushing the boundaries of open data and improving inclusivity in science. Everyone in MPS is incredibly proud of Kate’s achievements and this Royal Society award is richly deserved.”